Christmas Box Set

by Nella Tyler

  “How’s she doing, anyway?”

  “She seemed okay. She invited me to some reunion party at her place that she’s hosting tomorrow night. I guess a lot of people we went to school with are in town for the holiday and have agreed to go.”

  Jake leaned over onto the table, still giving me his slyest smile. He had dark eyes, like Sophia, but they were slightly slanted at the ends. His mom was Vietnamese, and his dad was whiter than a sheet of paper. Jake was a perfect cross between the two, with dark eyes, olive skin, and light brown hair that turned red in the sun.

  “Are you going to go?” he asked.

  I shrugged as I took a sip of my beer, which was much lighter than Jake’s. “I told her I would. The minute she saw me, she started going on about the party and what she still needed to buy, but she mentioned not having the money for all of it until she got paid, which wouldn’t happen until today. I told her I’d get a few things. I ended up buying seventy five bucks worth of party supplies.”

  Jake brayed his loud laugh as I smiled somewhat helplessly. “Good to hear Lisa hasn’t changed much.”

  “Do you want to go?” I asked. “She said anyone from our graduating class was invited. Well, all the cool kids.”

  “Why’d she invite you, then?”

  I chucked a little. “Funny.”

  “Seriously, do you think it’s a good idea for you to be palling around with a girl you used to date in high school?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “From what I heard, she rolled back into town on fumes after her cross country adventure with that biker and crashed landed. She managed to get her license to work as a hairdresser, but she’s known around town for dating serious losers. She’s trouble, in other words.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at him. “For someone who hasn’t seen Lisa since high school, you sure do know an awful lot about her. Damn.”

  He didn’t smile. “Some of us didn’t curl up in an antisocial bubble and refuse to go out.” He gave me a hard look. “And, you know how Madison is. People talk. It just one big little town.”

  All that was true. Madison wasn’t a quiet little hamlet by any means, but it didn’t have the big city feel that other places with the same population managed to have. I’d never decided if that was a good or a bad thing.

  “Anyway, I’m just telling you to watch yourself where Lisa’s concerned. After all the pieces of shit she’s been with, she might be on the lookout to get something started with you because she knows you scored a successful job after college.”

  “How would she know what I’m doing for a living?” I asked.

  Jake gave me a hard look, but his mouth was trying hard to spring into a smile. “For the hundredth time: this is Madison. Everyone knows what everyone is doing.”

  “I already told her I’d go,” I said with a sigh.

  “Maybe I should come, too, and make sure nothing happens between the two of you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Nothing is going to happen between us.” But it did seem like Lisa might’ve been open to it if I was. She was awfully clingy, grabbing onto my arms and pressing in close to me, especially when Sophia was around. “I’m not interested in hooking up with anyone.” That wasn’t exactly true, but Sophia wasn’t an option and hadn’t been for years.

  “Have you seen Sophia since you’ve been back?” Jake asked, dark eyebrows raised.

  The waitress came to the table with our steaks, smiling at each of us as she set them down on the table. I silently thanked her timing. It gave me a second to decide how I wanted to proceed in answering Jake’s question.

  We’d been close growing up — the only person closer was Sophia — but even he didn’t know what had happened between Sophia and me. No one really did, unless they heard it from the source of the broken connection.

  As far as the people I still spoke with in town knew, we had just naturally drifted apart the way people do when they grow up together but end up on separate ends of the country. I never came out and said it was mutual, but I certainly let people think that after I pretended I couldn’t really care less what had happened to Sophia, though I wished her well in whatever she was doing. If others had news of her, I had to hold myself back from springing on them while I battered them with my endless questions, the most important of which was always: does she ever mention me?

  “Enjoy your meal, guys,” the waitress said and walked off to check on another one of her tables. I waited for her to go before I started back in with the conversation. Jake didn’t seem to notice the delay, too busy digging into his steak and baked potato. I had to admit it smelled delicious. This was one of the nicer steakhouses in Madison. I hadn’t even had a better steak in San Francisco. Yet. There were a few steakhouses on my list, but I’d been busy trying all the ethnic places that I couldn’t find here in Wisconsin.

  “I actually saw Sophia last night,” I said, keeping my eyes on the piece of steak I was cutting into a bite-sized morsel. I popped it into my mouth and took my time chewing it before I answered. The meat was succulent and soft. I had to keep my eyes from rolling back in my head.

  Jake sat up a little straighter in his chair, a piece of steak ready on his fork, but he didn’t put it in his mouth just yet. “Wait, you saw her and Lisa last night?” He smiled at me, incredulous. “All of this after we finished hanging out?”

  “Yeah, at the same grocery store.”

  “Sounds like the reunion party was happening right there. You should’ve called me.”

  I chuckled at that, though it hadn’t been even a little bit funny last night.

  “How’s she doing? I haven’t seen her in forever.”

  That made two of us, but I didn’t say that.

  “She’s okay, I guess,” I replied. It always surprised me how nonchalant I was able to sound when I talked to her, because my heart felt ready to collapse on itself.

  “I still can’t believe you guys lost touch the way you did. I never saw one of you growing up without the other.” He shook his head.

  I put a hunk of steak in my mouth instead of answering, chewing methodically while I waited for him to move to another subject. But, of course, he didn’t.

  “You know, I always thought that you and Sophia would end up together,” he remarked, a thoughtful expression settling over his smooth features.

  My eyebrows pulled together sharply. Jake had a way about him that felt like he was reading my thoughts. Right before he said that, I was thinking about how much I’d always wanted to date Sophia in high school, but it never seemed like the right time to mention it. And then the last Christmas break that we’d come home and hung out with each other in the middle of sophomore year, we’d almost leaned into each other and kissed, but Sophia broke the spell, backing away from me and jumping out of the car and into the freezing weather while I watched, stunned by what had nearly happened.

  From that moment on, things were awkward between us for the first time ever. I couldn’t help but think that my desire to kiss her, to be with her for the rest of my life, was what chased her away.

  “What?” I asked, not quite trusting myself to say more before I knew what he was thinking.

  “I don’t know,” he said, shrugging as he worked on his steak, not lifting his dark eyes to meet mine though I was staring hard at the top of his head.

  “You just seemed perfect for each other. I figured you guys would date in high school. When that didn’t happen, I figured it would happen in college. But then she went off to New York and didn’t come back much. I’m still waiting for you to get together. Or I was, until I found out your parents are getting married. Dating your stepsister is all kinds of disgusting.” He finally lifted his eyes to mine and grinned wickedly before taking another dripping red bite of his steak.

  “Nah,” I said, and I had to work hard to keep my voice casual. One thing I’d realized since finding out about Dad marrying Ms. Ray — now I was supposed to call her Alice, and I didn’t know how I’d manage that after a lifetime of c
alling her by her last name — and coming back to Madison was that all the shit with Sophia was still so raw. I’d been a nervous wreck back in California before I even found out about the engagement, like my body knew what was coming and my mind just needed to catch up.

  I needed some serious help. After the wedding, I was going to look into speaking to someone. I had great insurance coverage. I should take full advantage of it. This all had to stop. Sophia was haunting my life. I’d never be able to move on unless I exorcised her lingering influence on me.

  “We were just friends,” I said, and it sounded like a lie to my own ears.

  “That’s not what it seemed like to everyone else,” Jake countered. “You two seemed perfect for each other. Funny that your parents are the ones who actually ended up together. Maybe that’s all for the best. You seem happy out in California, and Sophia is all the way on the east coast in New York. Maybe things just turned out for the best.”

  “Maybe,” I said, but didn’t believe it.

  “In any case, that door’s closed and locked now, right?” he said, grinning again. “You’re about to be brother and sister in less than a week.”

  I forced a laugh that felt even more fake than the smile I left pasted to my lips. “Yeah.”

  “There’s always Lisa Teller.”

  I dropped the smile, my eyes narrowing.

  Jake giggled like a little boy as I proceeded to give him my sourest expression. He let it go at that point, choosing to focus on slowly devouring his meal, while I did the same. I’d been hungry when we sat down at the table, but now I had to force myself to finish eating the way I’d been forcing myself to do everything else since I came back here.

  My thoughts were stuck on Sophia again, which defeated the purpose of hanging out with Jake in the first place. He was supposed to help get my mind off of her, not pin it to her in a way that I wouldn’t be able to shake loose again.

  My deepest, most secret thoughts mirrored exactly what Jake had just said. Despite attending different schools and ending up on opposite sides of the country pursuing our dream careers, I’d always held onto the childish expectation that Sophia and I would end up together. I pictured us living out one of those great love stories. Eventually, one of us would need to move to accommodate the other, and I was willing to be the one to do that. I’d follow her all over the globe; my work could easily be done remotely if need be, whereas Sophia had to work from a home base set up in a museum.

  But when she stopped contacting me, instead of those dreams fizzling and dying, they only magnified, infecting every aspect of my life without her. I didn’t know what to do to get out from under the weight of those dreams that would never be actualized.

  Now Sophia and I were destined to be stepbrother and stepsister. The finality of that change in status made it even clearer than it had been before that the great love I’d dreamed of since middle school just wasn’t to be. I needed to let it go before it completely consumed me and destroyed every single aspect of my life.

  Sophia

  Later That Same Afternoon

  It felt like we’d been running around nonstop since I got back into town, with dress fittings, family dinners and brunches, unending talks with the florists and caterers, and booking last minute appointments to have our hair and nails done on Christmas Eve since nothing would be open on the actual wedding day (we’ll just have to sleep sitting up, Mom said and laughed, after I asked how we would manage to make it to the following day without messing up our hair).

  This afternoon was really the first chance I’d gotten to just sit down with Lacey and talk about how she was doing and what was new in her life. Mom’s surprise news had overshadowed anything that might be going on in our lives; which was fine, but frustrating because I didn’t get as much time as I’d like to come home for obvious reasons. I wanted to take a little time to touch base with my baby sister. She was still in school at the University of Wisconsin here in Madison for another year and a half. I’d pushed hard to get her to study abroad her junior year, but she was leaning towards becoming a physical therapist and didn’t see the reasoning behind uprooting her life to go overseas.

  We set up next to the fireplace in the front room, both of us in sweats and socks, our hair pulled back in messy ponytails. We sat in the twin rocking chairs that had been in this room since before I could remember and nursed our mugs of fresh hot cocoa. Mom was out running around like a chicken with her head cut off, the same way she’d been since I got back into town. Usually, we would be dragged along with her, but one of her good friends had volunteered to lean into the crazy, giving Lace and me a much needed break. Things were only going to get more insane from here, so we needed to enjoy all the breaks we could get.

  “I’m happy Mom’s happy,” I said, rocking slowly back and forth. “But she is driving me right up the wall. I needed this break.” I lifted my mug of cocoa, a huge dollop of whipped cream bobbing along the top, and we toasted each other. I took a sip, relishing the warm liquid and the feeling of being so close to a toasty fire. I didn’t have a fireplace in my apartment back in the city. Willem had one at his place, but they didn’t seem like the kind of family that enjoyed gathering around a fire the way we’d always been.

  “She’s just excited,” Lacey replied. “I get that. She hasn’t even dated since before Daddy. Now she’s getting married.” She took a sip of her cocoa. “I’m just glad to be out of school for the next several weeks. It’s been a tough semester.” She blew some air out of her bottom lip, sending it up to ruffle the bangs she’d cut since I last saw her.

  After failing at getting her to study abroad, I kept trying to get her to visit me in the city, hoping she’d love it so much that she’d want to stay out there. Once she was settled, Mom would have no choice but to join us. Then I’d never have to come back to Madison ever again. It was completely selfish, and it was all about not wanting to run into Carter, but the plan had seemed so perfect.

  Now it just seemed incredibly stupid, especially considering we were only a few short days away from being related. The thought turned my stomach.

  “How do you really feel about all this?” I asked in a lower voice, though we were the only two in the house. Mom wasn’t due back for hours. She was the type who sent copious amounts of text messages about her progress, which made it impossible not to know exactly where she was and when she’d be home.

  Lace gave me a long look, her dark eyes seeing things in me that no one else could. But even she didn’t know what had happened with Carter. I kept that locked inside and from the discussion over dinner with Mr. Mills — er, John — Carter had done the same thing. I had to wonder, and not for the first time, if he was okay. My suffering never really left me, but his had to be so much worse because he didn’t even know why any of this had happened.

  “I’m happy for her,” she said. “Mom spent so many years focusing all her attention on us and making sure we were okay. I always felt bad about that. She never went on dates or did anything for herself. She’s been alone since Dad died.”

  My fingers tightened on my mug of cocoa as her words stabbed at my heart. I hadn’t really thought of it that way, or I hadn’t thought of it that way for long before letting everything loop back to me, and now I felt horrible for how worried I’d been about the situation with Carter. Mom was finally doing something for herself. Would I have been more comfortable if she’d picked any other guy in the world? Yes, but this wasn’t about me. I had to keep reminding myself of that so I didn’t ruin things for her the way I’d ruined them for myself.

  “That’s true,” I said. “It’s just a little weird that she’s marrying Mr. Mills!”

  Lace grinned. “John, you mean?”

  We both burst out laughing, the tension loosening its grip on me all at once. She was a lot more comfortable calling him by his first name than I was.

  “I ran into Carter and Lisa Teller last night at the grocery store,” I said, working hard to make it sound perfectly casual.
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  Lacey licked away her whipped cream mustache before she answered. “I see Lisa all over the place. She works at the beauty shop next to the diner. You know, the one you and Carter used to go to all the time? Right down the street from the high school?”

  I nodded. “I haven’t been there in ages. I’d kill for a piece of apple pie from there.” That had been Carter’s favorite, too. Now that I didn’t need to worry about avoiding any place I might see him, I decided to find an opportunity to go over there and order some pie a la mode.

  “We can go sometime,” Lacey said. “I haven’t been since you left town.”

  “Deal.”

  We sipped our mugs of cocoa in silence before restarting the conversation.

  “Lisa invited me to some reunion party since so many of us are back in town for the holiday,” I said. “I haven’t decided if I’m going to go or not.”

  “When is it?”

  “Tomorrow night.” I took another long swallow of my cocoa, licking the whipped cream off my upper lip and wiping the rest off with my fingers. “It’s just kind of strange timing. Most of us come home all the time for the holidays. Why choose this Christmas break when everything else is so crazy?”

  Lacey lifted one of her feet toward the fire, letting the flames warm it before switching to the next foot, her hot cocoa cradled in both hands.

  “Most families probably aren’t planning a wedding on Christmas Day the way we are. And this is the first winter break since your friend group graduated from college. Tons of people came home again after that. You’re kind of an anomaly because you stayed where you went to college. And then you have people like Carter who went to college around here but then moved right afterwards for a job. Social media is great, but it isn’t the best way to keep in touch with people, you know? All of your friends have finally gotten into careers after graduating. Aren’t you interested in just talking to people you used to know when you were living here and going to high school?”